"I can say, in all conscience, that I believe that X4: Foundations is the space simulation with the most possibilities in space.

The biggest sandbox this side of the galaxy became, so to say, even bigger.

It is not neccessary to have played one of the precursers since the '99 release X: Beyond the frontier, or have read one of the many books from Helge T. Kautz, to be able to enjoy X4.
But we put in much effort to connect the game to this gigantic, established universe.
As such, even the new-comer gets the feeling to be around in an universe with a long pre-story.

One fundamental feature in the beginning, something that many missed with X: Rebirth: Yes, you can fly almost any ship in the universe, personally.

From small fighters, with you as a pilot and a two-man crew, up to giant carriers which can carry a whole fleet.

You can run around on the bridge and give the crew orders over the minimap and watch how they improve their abilities. But you can just as well go to the captain's console and take control of the ship yourself.
With this, the biggest challenge was to create a seamless change between those different sizes. This is especially visible when you decide for the first time to change from a station's platform to a ship.
You're running around on the station, climb into a small fighter's cockpit by a ladder, fly to a bigger frigatte, climb out and run to the cockpit of the frigatte, land this one on a carrier just to get off and go to the bridge, all without loadscreens or cutscenes, even when flying through jumpgates"

"X4 is set after the previous X games. A series of big events which, in only a few decades, have led to massive changes in the universe.
Whole civilisations cut off from their home planets, a big crisis for most of them.
But now, with the beginning of X4, a better future seems possible again.
And you, the player, have the chance to form this future.

Because X4 is a fully dynamic universe. The economy as well as the universe structure and the political alliances are fully dynamic.
Instead of a premade linear story posesses the game a multitude of procedurally adapted stories.
Thats the reason why we can say that its the biggest sandbox, not only because of the literal size of the universe but also because of the influence you, as the player, can have on the universe.

Let's take the economy for example, naturally you can trade at the beginning of the game, its one of the core activities of the X games.
Not that you'd have to do it, theres many other ways to get rich.
Although a little bit of trade is always necessary, even if you prefer to steal or plunder the wares first.

Maybe you already trade with the first ship which you fly personally, extend it with your profits, buy a bigger ship to trade with it or keep both and command them from afar.
You build a fleet of ever larger trade ships up to your own capital ships, which can transport gigantic amounts of wares at once.

Then theres station building, another core feature of the X games, but improved strongly.
Thanks to the new 3D map you can build any kind of space station, factory or shipyard completely from station modules yourself.
Not only does that bring many creative possibilites but also the possibility to react to the dynamic economy to build the best self-supplying factories.
Unique factories which neve existed in that form before.

On the lowest end of such a self supplying factory you need resources.
Resource procurement means mining but collector ships as well, for a multitude of natural resouces.
You can decide here as well if you want to personally mine ores and collect resources or send ships with your own crew to do it for you.
Or you can to swallow the bitter pill and pay other factions for the ready products.

So again, complete freedom.
You dont have to play any of those aspects, but if you do it, manual mining can also be a lot of fun.
With small fighters equipped with additional mining lasers and cargo space up to specialised minig ships.

Manual mining gets more lucrative if its combined with the exploration of the universe.
Theres lots of things to find, procedurally generated as well as manually placed.
We mix both of those philosophies to attain the best result: a living, exciting universe.

With X4 we added a series of really cool things you can do unlock those treasures, artifacts and super valuable resources.
For example: your space suit.
You leave the safety of your ship and break into a vacated, mysterious relic station.
Or fly into the smallest corners of a gigantic asteroid to find hidden crystals.
Like everything else in the game, the space suit can be upgraded and used in big battles as well, to place bombs on big stations or to search for secrets via espionage.

Regardless of you preferring Trade, Fight, Build or any of the many mission chains, after a while you'll begin investing your riches, that then decides often about your style of play.
Do you build big fleets to fight your own wars instead of just accepting war contracts from warring factions?
Or do you invest into an ever bigger self supporting economy, becoming a rich mogul and personally defending your empire from enemy competition?
Enemies you can multiply easily if you decide to live a pirate's life.
Or do you follow the mission chains? Be it for the police or the pirates, a war mission
or the story around the personal player's headquarter.
Soon we will show more from the Player's Headquarter, but for now i can reveal that, even though there's no main story arc, that the headquarter will be part of a very special story which many players will play to receive unique blueprints and technologies.

The biggest design effort in he development of X4 was definitely the user interface.
Especially the 3D map system. It opens up the possibilities to create a game with this gigantic amount of features and to still keep it controllable and easily accessible.
X4 supports all methods of input: mouse, gamepad, HOTAS and adapts to different physical models.
Normally are the controls stabilised by your shipboard computer system, but that can be turned off for advanced flight maneuvers and a physically accurate flight experience.
In addition to that theres a function which we call "adaptive control".
Of course you can freely configure the control axis, but if you want you can let the game automatically analyse the characteristics of a ship and reconfigure gamepad or mouse depending on the ship having faster roll or yaw controls.

Of course does X4: Foundations stand at the beginning of a new saga, we tried creating a large as possible universe for release this year.
Multiple factions of the Argons, Teladi and Paranids with multiple economic cycles each.
The Paranids for example, a species with deep religious convictions, schismed into two competing empires and are now waging war against each other.
Of course theres also a lot of potential enemies, those you can reason with like various pirate factions
and those you cant reason with like the infamous Xenon, a machine race of advanced artificial intelligences which have been created by humanity themself to aid them in settling space.

There will be extensions which will bring more races, their ships, stations and missions into the X4 universe.
That needs time and money. Our goal is to be able to deliver the first extensions withhin one year.
Release date and prices will be announced shortly."
... damn that took me an hour for that stupid 6 minute segment

Last edited by Cornflakes_91 on Sun Sep 09, 2018 3:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

Well, Egosoft has always delivered on the pre-release hype, Cornflakes, and I haven't seen or heard anything that's likely to dissuade me from a pre-order. I just hope that this time they manage to deliver the game they are promising.

This may be a day-one (or maybe day two, day three just to be safe) purchase for me, but I'm not going to pre-order. I love Egosoft but the state of their games on release is routinely terrible, no matter the hype. They haven't lost my loyalty, but they've lost my pre-release support.

I haven't played any X game before, but I have to admit that this trailer makes me really curious. I think if the initial reactions to this game after release are good I might pick this up for once
This thread will probably be a good source of qualified opinions

Well that definitely looks pretty cool, and is certainly formidable competition for LT, as well as the others trying for a similar game. I still wouldn't pre-order on principle, but it definitely looks like it will be worth getting at some point down the line. It also makes me think that LT will need to focus a marketing pitch on what it can do that these other games cannot...which as far as i can tell is the sheer moddability and the hundreds of configurable sliders for adjusting gameplay in fundamental ways.

Challenging your assumptions is good for your health, good for your business, and good for your future. Stay skeptical but never undervalue the importance of a new and unfamiliar perspective.Imagination Fertilizer
Beauty may not save the world, but it's the only thing that can

X-Game alway felt to me like I wanted to play them but in the past after I bought them, installed them, clicked through a couple of menues I always was glad that Steam had made it easy to get a refund.
Always too complicated.

But this one makes me feel again like i want to play...maybe this time it will work for me...and maybe a goodbye to games that are not just in theory limited

I dont think the UI will be a smooth and polished experience in X4. Thats just not Egosofts strong point. They want to allow a lot of actions, wich makes designing a UI for it a pretty complex task. (Especially when someone has the detrimental idea to also make it all work for a controller)

The X game really take a while to get accustomed to. But once you get the hang of it, the fascination lies in the complex world simulation.
Like playing Stellaris or Civ Games. They are not really fun at the very beginning.

I dont think the UI will be a smooth and polished experience in X4. Thats just not Egosofts strong point. They want to allow a lot of actions, wich makes designing a UI for it a pretty complex task. (Especially when someone has the detrimental idea to also make it all work for a controller)

The X game really take a while to get accustomed to. But once you get the hang of it, the fascination lies in the complex world simulation.
Like playing Stellaris or Civ Games. They are not really fun at the very beginning.

It not being their forte doesnt remove the fact that they are building a proper UI for an X-Game after 20 years of shoehorning more stuff into the existing one.

I fear that "you can also use a controller", will mean again that the UI is designed to also be fully controllable with a controller, thus not taking full advantage of the mouse-keybord functionality.
Especially things like drag-drop, mark-drag-select and pixel-precise cursor actions.

Rebirth had a lot of menus, that would be way easier to navigate when ignoring controller input at the design stage in the first place.
-> And only use the controller for flight related actions, where it actually has some advantages.